I have also been able to understand that this problem is not limited to the 82573L card but is common for a large number of intel ethernet cards (that is why you can easily understand the driver’s blacklisting in the old linux distributions) : 82563, 82566, 82567, 82571, 82572, 82573, 82574, 82577, 82578, 82579, or 82583 -based.

So what is going on ? It looks like that the nework adapter’s (82573L) EEPROM is broken, unfixed and a little messed up, (error PXE-E05) this problem creates a checksum error for the NVM (The NVM Checksum Is Not Valid) that breaks the Ubuntu driver loading therefore the eth0 alias is not created and there isn’t a manageable ethernet adapter for the Ubuntu network manger.

Windows simply doesn’t check the NVM checksum, it uses the card anyway and everything works fine.

IMHO Intel messed up a little with the 82573 controller there are too many similar errors out there, it seems it happens when there is a sudden power outage during LAN card bootime…totally nonsense !

Anyway, we need to fix this !!! As you can easily understand the idea behind this guide will work for many others Intel controllers from the same family: I’m unable to test them but it’s probably worth giving it a shot !

And here it’s the guide…it’s not as long as it seems :

We need to remove the old 82573L driver, install the updated 82573 network controller driver, create a MS DOS boot pen drive, reboot, flash the card eeprom, and reboot again (there are a lot of subguides to ease the process for newbies USE THEM)

now we need to go to the intel site, download and extract the Intel(R) Ethernet Connections Boot Utility, Preboot images, and EFI Drivers ( http://bit.ly/jatTVE ) then prepare a MSDOS bootable pen drive and copy the extracted files we just downloaded to the pen drive.

Several ways to create a bootable MSDOS pen drive the Windows way (PREFERRED) and the Linux1 , Linux2 and Linux3 way (should I use now the saxon genitive, now ? ) choose your favorite one but always REMEMBER TO PUT THE EXTRACTED FILES TO THE PEN DRIVE.

Now go reading the important NOTE at the end of the page containing the disclaimer !

Now boot using the pendrive ( SUBGUIDE ) and assuming you’re at the command prompt:

DISCLAIMER: You probably need to know that the Intel(R) Ethernet Connections Boot Utility WAS NOT designed to be used with on board (also know as OEM) lan cards (is for the PCI cards) therefore there is no sure way to predict it’s interactions with others on board components like USB or SOUND controllers. I haven’t experienced any problem with my computer and I haven’t seen any negative review using Google (HP dv6000) but there is no way to be 100 %. What I can tell you is that procedure is the only way to make the cards working otherwise you need to buy a new external card. Eventually use at your own risk and patrol

Thank you very much.
After 3 days of digging and googling I finally brought my LAN to life🙂
used bootutil -nic=1 -defcfg command.
I have only one LAN card, for those who has several can use “bootutil -nic=x -blink” command to find correct number: Should start blinking light on device with specified number for 10 seconds.

Just a quick question — When this happened to you, did your ethernet port leds start flashing/blinking even though no cable was plugged? I use wireless 95% of the time at my place so I never quite noticed this issue until now, also because the port leds are a bit hidden to be honest. Still I believe it’s just a few days old because I tend to pay attention to POST.

As for the BIOS “Initializing Intel Boot Agent GE v.1.2.28 PXE-E05: LAN adapter’s configuration is corrupted or has not been initialized. The Boot Agent cannot continue.” message, it’s exactly the same and the relevant parts of my dmesg are exactly the same as yours.

Just want to clear up this led flashing/blinking thing just to be sure it’s not a hardware problem. It did appeared overnight in this 4 year old laptop and I never hit it or anything.

First of all let me express my gratitude for this post, thank you very much.

When I first noticed the warning text that something was wrong with the ethernet controller I thought – damn I damaged the NIC somehow. It stopped working in Ubuntu/FreeBSD and Hackintosh whereas previously it was working. Now you say that it has something to do with my Ubuntu installation which makes me sad because the rumors spread by M$ are true – Linux distros can brake you hardware. (As the author mentioned my LAN card does work under Windows Vista and Windows 7).

I followed your instructions step-by-step and holly mackerel, after years of annoying BIOS PXE warning, now there’s no warning just non threatening PXE stuff. Ubuntu recognizes the interface, too. Does it work, dunno but I guess so.

I would like to point out to other readers (likely owners of HP Pavilions dv6xxx) that the latest e1000e drivers are different from the one the author used. The Intel boot utility is also different or updated.
You have to copy only the “BootUtil” folder onto your pendrive (discard the other crap). The command should be as follows:
C:\BOOTUTIL\bootutil -nic=1 -defcfg

The nic argument tells bootutil that you want the first ethernet controller in the list to be updated(since this is your laptop you won’t have two).

I received some errors that’s why I recommend the -nic=1 or -all command arguments.

Hi Georgi,
you’re welcome !
I don’t think Ubuntu can break down your hardware, it’s just that Linux is more “careful” about driver usage than windows and therefore it waits for everything to be ok.
I am also not sure that the bootutil program will always recognize the oem eth controller as the first NIC device (usb or pci devices ?) but i will update my post with your modifications.

You sir are a genius. This worked perfectly on my Lenovo T60 ThinkPad. I’ve been using it on wireless to develop a website and searched for a fix for far too long before i stumbled upon this.
Thanks again!

Hi Sorcerer. Good job for putting together a comprehensive post with step-by-step instructions. I have a T60 dual partitioned with Ubuntu 11.10 and Windows XP. Same as you, Windows recognizes the wired network card without kicking up a fuss and Ubuntu does not see the Ethernet card at all.

Followed your instructions but the “PXE-E05: LAN adapter’s configuration is corrupted…”error message persists. This suggests that resetting the BIOS with bootutil did not work. Perhaps the version of bootutil I used, the latest available version, version 16.8 (http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=19186) does not work with the T60 hardware?

the freedos boot usb made with Unetbootin did not work but the created win98 usb boot usb with Windows XP and the HP tool did. Remark: from the Intel zip file unpacked to the USB the bootutil.exe resides in PPS/BootUtil/DOS . But most important: it worked!!! I can use the Intel NIC wired network on my T60 now with Ubuntu (12.04, I had the problem already with older versions. Thank you very much for posting this solution.

Hi!
Thanks for the post!
I followed your steps, but it failed. it showed the error “PXE not flashed on port 1, firmware not present”
I tried to enable flash “bootutil -all – fe” too, but it also displayed the “Invalid argument on port 1”
Windows has no problem with it but Ubuntu has. eth0 not present.
Can you help?
Thank you.

This solution worked great. I had installed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on a homemade PC with Intel d975xbx2 and had the onboard NIC UNCLAIMED. I followed the instruction above using the current Intel driver version e1000e-3.0.4.